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THE DIVINE URGE TO 
MISSIONARY SERVICE 


Dwight Goddard 


John ¥. Gouen 
6 twt-% 


The Divine Urge 


to 
Missionary Service 


AVE you ever read Mr. Goddard’s translation 
and interveaving of the Four Gospels? Write 

to Fleming H. Revell Co., 58 Fifth Ave., New 
York. Ask for: “The Good News of A Spiritual 
Realm” by Dwight Goddard. Price One Dollar. 


Extra copies of this address sent freely. Address 


DWIGHT GODDARD : : ANN ARBOR, MICH. 


THE DIVINE URGE TO 
MISSIONARY SERVICE 


Dwight Goddard 


LECTURE delivered before the Students 

of Chicago Theological Seminary 
and the Student Volunteers of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago 


and the students of the 
Hartford Seminary Foundation. 


DECEMBER 1917 
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN. 


y 


THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY PRESS 


b 


as : . ; : . ma 


THE DIVINE URGE TO MIS- 
SIONARY SERVICE 


INTRODUCTION 


T IS a commonplace to say that the present 
day missionary motive is different from the 
missionary motive of former days, but wherein 
it differs, whether it be more ethical or more 
emotional, stronger or wiser, is little discerned, 
or even much thought about. 

The purpose of this address is to recall the 
change which has taken place in the statement 
of the missionary motive in the past hundred 
years and to show the relation of that motive 


6 THE DIVINE URGE 


to the changing philosophical thought of the 
times. Secondly, to present and to analyze 
several different statements of the missionary 
aim and motive as made by well known leaders 
of missionary enterprises. Third, to offer a 
statement of what the writer believes to be a 
true definition of Christianity, and then to 
offer a statement of missionary motives in har- 
mony with it. 


A CENTURY AGO. 


When the young collegians gathered under 
the haystack at Williamstown, a hundred years 
ago, to devote themselves to the evangelization 
of the great heathen world, the motive which 
urged them forward was a deep concern for 
the lost condition of the heathen. The annual 
sermons preached before the American Board 
in those early days were very generally char- 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 7 


acterized by the same burden, the awful retri- 
bution that lay before the non-elect and the 
impenitent. In those days they were living in 
an intellectual atmosphere of pure thought, 
untouched by many of the philosophical canons 
that are today so generally believed,—scien- 
tific rationalism, evolution, and ethical ideal- 
ism. They held their religious faith in logical 
and judicial terms: a sovereign God, an aton- 
ing Saviour, sinful men, retribution, and the 
phenomena of repentance, forgiveness and 
justification. Some followed Calvin in placing 
emphasis on the Sovereignty of God and hence 
saw salvation only for the elect, while others 
emphasized free grace and therefore worked 
for repentance, but all alike stressed the nega- 
tive side, the awful retribution of the unbe- 
lieving. 

The missionary’ aim was, universally, to 
carry the knowledge of salvation to perishing 


8 THE DIVINE URGE 


souls, to save as many as possible from eternal 
damnation. The missionary motive was one of 
mingled pity and obedience: pity for the lost 
condition of the heathen and obedience to the 
command of a sovereign God. 


SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM. 


i 


In the last one hundred years profound 
changes have taken place in philosophical 
thought due to the new light which scientific 
research has thrown on all things. One after 
another, commanding systems of thought have 
passed into the discard. Just now Scientific 
Rationalism, Pragmatism and Ethical Ideal- 
ism are on the defense and a new system of 
Vitalism is fast assuming leadership. 

When the writer was at the Polytechnic 
thirty years ago, a kind of agnosticism, which 
practically amounted to atheism, characterized 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 9 


the thought of nearly all the great scientists. 
Today this is not so. The sufficiency of evo- 
lution to explain all phenomena with no need 
of an intelligent or moral first cause, was then 
confidently asserted. This assertion of scien- 
tific rationalism was carried to excess in Ger- 
man universities and is there still maintained 
long after it.has lost its force in England and 
the United States. By it Germany “has fed 
her mind but: starved:her soul.” There is no 
missionary motive in Scientific Rationalism. 
The present war is the logical outcome of a 
national faith that is based on survival by 
physical superiority. 


PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM. 


In the United States there grew up a school 
of thought called Pragmatic, because the solid 
good sense of the Anglo-Saxon mind saw that 


10 THE DIVINE URGE 


any system of thought if true must “work,” 
but, unfortunately, this school of thought more 
and more took on a decidedly materialistic 
trend and in religion confined itself to a study 
of religious psychology, and in its turn has had 
to give way before an increasing reliance upon 
an idealistic interpretation of life and thought. 

At the same time the best religious thought 
in Germany was trying to find some tenable 
defence for religion as opposed to scientific ra- 
tionalism. The best defence was found in the 
teaching of Ritschl, a philosophy of intellec- 
tual and ethical idealism. Roughly speaking, 
Ritschlian thought admitted the general deduc- 
tions of science: monism, evolution ‘and the 
inadequacy of pure ideas unsupported by 
laboratory methods, but asserted the necessity 
of an intelligent first cause and a moral pur- 
pose back of all phenomena. This school of 
thought, therefore, while positing God, limited 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 11 


all that could be truly asserted of Him to that 
which could be seen in Jesus. They saw in 
evolution a tendency towards the ideal, but in 
order to avoid as far as possible, a clash with 
science they carefully avoided metaphysical 
and transcendental elements of thought and 
limited religion to religious psychology, and to 
its application for spiritual culture and for the. 
betterment of social conditions. At the pres- 
ent day most of the influential professors in 
our theological schools and many of our lead- 
ing preachers having been trained in German 
universities have come back to us more or less 
influenced by Ritschlian idealism. 

To them the Kingdom of God is an ideal 
social order, toward which humanity is slowly 
tending; to them Christianity has largely 
ceased to be an individualistic responsibility, 
to become a social message of hope and better- 
ment. This school of thought is inclined to 


12 THE DIVINE URGE 


blur over any distinction between the natural 
and spiritual, holding firmly to the necessity 
of confining all thought to the reality we know 
in nature. When confronted with spiritual 
phenomena they prefer to think of them in 
terms of the higher and more complex but 
natural activities of the human mind, rather 
than to consider them as the interaction of 
transcendental forces working for a higher 
type of life. 

They stress heavily the inspirational value 
of spiritual ideals, but avoid, often to the point 
of denial, any assertion of the reality of an in- 
dependent life of the spirit. To them, as ex- 
pressed by Dean Bosworth at an Annual 
Meeting of the American Board, the interpre- 
tation of the Gospel varies from age to age, 
and is largely conditioned by its own time. 
For our own day he asserts, “the Gospel is seen 
as a highly spiritualized economics.” 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 18 


Idealists deny with Ritschl that Mysticism 
is an essential part of Christianity. On the 
contrary they look on it as essentially alien, 
something that must be combatted as wrong 
and weakening. President King, of Oberlin, 
in an address on the essentials of citizenship 
that are to survive the present world war, said, 
“In religion all emotional mysticism is to be 
left behind.” | 

These two schools of modern thought, prag- 
matism and idealism, which so largely dom- 
inate the more intellectual theological opinion 
of our day, find themselves side by side in this 
common denial of an independent realm of the 
spirit. Necessarily their statement of the mis- 
sionary motive will be, and is, conditioned by 
their intellectual idealism. It emphasizes the 
idealism of justice, kindness and righteous- 
ness; its.aim is the inculcation of these ideals, 
the relief of suffering, the improvement: of : 


14 THE DIVINE URGE 


social conditions, and the efficiency of educa- 
tional and social service. 


SPIRITUAL BELIEF. | 


But if the more highly educated leaders are 
cherishing pragmatic and idealistic explana- 
tions of the universe, the great rank and file of 
our Christian membership are not, and there 
are multitudes outside the Church who are 
clinging tenaciously to a faith in the reality of 
a spiritual realm, and of a way of salvation 
through faith, by which the soul may transcend 
the natural life and advance into a higher life 
process of the spirit. Does anyone doubt for 
a moment that if the Christian pulpit of our 
generation had stood firmly for the independ- 
ent reality of a babunal realm, and for a 


ar gh ip: 


News that Jesus brought, that such multitudes 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 15 


of believers would have left the Church to turn 
to Christian Science, Theosophy and New 
Thought? | 

_ The same hunger of heart in the great bulk 
of our Church membership for spiritual veri- 
ties explains the great waves of response to 
the evangelistic appeal of Sunday and other 
revival leaders, and the Northfield and Kes- 
wick constituency, all of whom are out and out 
champions of a higher spiritual life for the 
soul. To them the Gospel Message of Jesus 
is one, not of cultural value, of social impor- 
tance, but one that concerns the life and death 
of an immortal soul. 

But this spiritual interpretation of the uni- 
verse is not confined to the uneducated mullti- 
tudes. The very best of our present day 
philosophers and scientists believe in this life 
of the spirit, which is to be known, not by the 
erude processes of the intellect and the labo- 


16 THE DIVINE URGE 


ratory exclusively, but is to be experienced 
directly by spiritual immediacy. The names of 
Rudolph Eucken and Lord Kelvin give dig- 
nity to such a belief, and, besides, there are 
scores of other thinkers of the first rank who 
by their writings and their addresses have 
already accomplished for our day a revival of 
mysticism. A die 
To these champions of a spiritual interpre- 
tation of existence and its problems, Chris- 
tianity is in no true sense confined to spiritual 
culture, and volitional direction and inspira- 
tion towards the most efficient life on the nat- 
ural plane. They see with Max Miller that. 
the essence of religion lies, “not in doctrines or 
cults, but in. immediate inward experience 
in the direct: apprehension of the In- 
finite. It is the longing of the heart for some- 
thing that transcends. the finite Selnae ee 
Longfellow with true poetic insight. voices 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 17 


instinctive faith when he introduces Hiawa- 
tha by saying: 
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
Who have faith in God and Nature, 
Who believe, that in all ages 
Every human heart is human, 
That in even savage bosoms 
- There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
For the good they comprehend not, 
That the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God’s right hand in that darkness 
And are lifted up and strengthened. 

The presence and activity of a sense of the 
Divine is increasingly appreciated as of the 
very essence of religion, and such a belief is 
strengthened by the increasing faith of our 
best modern scholarship in the reality of a 
primal cosmic urge that has from the begin- 
ning and is still moving toward some far off 
divine event in man. 


18 THE DIVINE URGE 


This clearing sense of the Divine, this re 
ligious instinct, this spiritual consciousness, 
with all its riches-of inner fellowship with the 
Perfect, is more and more seen to be of the 
essence of Chrstianity and it is endorsed by 
the highest scholarship of our day. 

‘The definition of religion which Dr. Hardy 
offers in his book on the Religious Instinct, is 
based on a mystical contact of the soul with 
this transcendental Spirit and the soul’s crav- 
ing for and movement toward its higher power, 
for safety and fellowship. 

Ritschl said: “We can only know deity as 
we see it expressed in Jesus.” But the true 
Christian believes that the mystic’s intuitive 
sense of reality furnishes clear, independent, 
and reliable knowledge of God and of our re- 
lation to Him. 

Dr. Tuckwell says: “The true mystic éx- 
perience is always characterized by a sense of 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 19 


great intellectual illumination, or by what is 
usually termed mtuition. . . . It is a 
union of the strands of thought and feeling 
in a higher inclusive immediacy. . . . In 
this experience whose essential character is just 
this unity of comprehension, consciousness at- 
tains its completest, its most direct, and its final 
apprehension of what Reality is and means. 
Even William James tells us that in 
mystic states depths of truth are reached which 
are unplumbed by the discursive intellect.” 
As Dr. Bell wrote in The Atlantic Monthly: 
“The thing about Jesus which attracted peo- 
ple-was not especially the newness, or the 
beauty, of his moral science. It was rather 
that men and women felt a power flowing from 
Him which they deemed to be the power of 


God Himself.” ‘The sacramental system is 
not a means for teaching an ethical system or 


morality. It is rather a means of attaining 


20 THE DIVINE URGE 


mystical contact with Jesus—‘That they might 
have life and have it more abundantly.’ ” 

The missionary message of these believers 
is therefore one of faith in the Good News of 
a Spiritual Life—in its reality, in its all- 
sufficiency, in its urgency, and in its infinite 
promise. 

Thus we see that the ethical idealism which 
is being so much taught, and the social message 
of Jesus, which is being so much stressed in 
our day, which is the natural missionary mes- 
sages of pragmatic and idealistic philosophies, 
are in sharp contrast with the spiritual and 
mystical faith for which the larger part of the 
Christian communion consciously or uncon- 
sciously yearns. 

But we are so tolerant and liberal-minded 
these days, that we are inclined to belittle and 
gloss over this divergence of belief, and to dis- 
miss it lightly as only a difference in view- 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 21 


point which in action eventuates in about the 
same result. It reminds me of a careful con- 
versation once held with a typical Chinese 
literary man, in which I tried to explain to 
him our faith in God. After I had finished, 
he said complacently: “Yes, our religions 
are about the same; you believe in God, we 
believe in Heaven.” So we accept the really 
fine things that are said by idealists and ex- 
claim, “Yes, our religious faith is much the 
same. You believe in a God of Imminence; 
we believe in a God of Transcendance.” And 
then we ignore, if we happen to notice it at 
all, that the fundamentals upon which we are 
building are radically different, and contra- 
dictory if carried very far in logical develop- 
ment. 


DIFFERENT STATEMENTS OF MOTIVE. 


Now to bring this difference in fundamen- 
tals clearly before us, let us examine a number 


22 THE DIVINE URGE 


of different statements of the missionary aim 
and motive, that have been written lately. 
_ Dean Bosworth of Oberlin College writes: 
“T should state it (the missionary motive) this 
way: The desire to do his utmost under the 
personal leadership of the immortal spirit of 
Jesus Christ, toward securing a world civiliza- 
tion in which every man shall be doing, and 
expect forever more to continue doing, an en- 
larging day’s work in conscious fellowship with 
the unseen God as his Father, and with other 
men as his brothers.” 

The noticeable things about this statement 
are the emphasis which falls on “a world civ- 
ilization” and the entire absence of the old 
time concern for the moral condition and retri- 
bution of “his brothers.” One feels as he reads 
it that it does not affirm the reality of the Liv- 
ing Christ and of our God. One is tempted to 
ask why insert, “of the immortal spirit” before 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 238 


Jesus, and “unseen” before God? Would it 
not have a more loyal ring to it, to say simply 
—“under the personal leadership of Jesus 
Christ,” and “in conscious fellowship with 
God”? 

You may think this is a small distinction to 
make, but that is the very point I am trying to 
make, that these small and seemingly unim- 
portant distinctions are really indications of 
divergence that if carried very far are disas- 
trous. Herein lies potentially all the differ- 
ence between a conventional college carried on 
“in the spirit of Jesus,” and one carried on by 
the burning evangelistic zeal of a Finney. 

Here is a statement of one who prefers to 
remain anonymous: “The work of a modern 
missionary is simply to hold aloft the person- 
ality of Jesus Christ—‘“The Lamb of God, that 
taketh away the sin of the World’—until that 
vision shall burn itself into their consciousness 


24 THE DIVINE URGE 


and create new ideals of righteousness, purity, 
truth, justice and tenderness.” This writer 
believes in preaching rather than in institu- 
tional work as to method, but is rather more 
idealistic and cultural than evangelistic in his 
aim. 

Rev. J. D. Fleming, Organizing Director of 
Missionary Service in Union Theological Sem- 
inary, writes as follows: “The fundamental 
motives of Christian Missions are found in the 
character of God uniquely embodying forth- 
going pursuant grace; in the incomparable 
worth to every human being of the person of 
Jesus Christ; and in the vision of a world in 
need. The aim of Christian Missions is the 
Christianizing of the whole social order, pre- 
eminently through individuals as transformed 
through Jesus Christ and organized into self 
governing, self propagating churches.” In 
this the practical aim of “Christianizing the 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 25 


whole social order,” stands out prominently, 
but is expressed in decidedly theological and 
ecclesiastical terms. 

In sharp contrast to the foregoing, stands 
a statement by Rev. C. Inwood as printed by 
the Los Angeles Bible House for present day 
distribution. It is more in accord with the 
thought of a hundred years ago and sounds 
strange to present day ears, but will serve to 
show how far we have moved in the last 
century. 

“The sobbing of a thousand million of poor 
heathen sounds in my ear, and moves my heart; 
and I try to measure, as God helps me, some- 
thing of their darkness, something of their 
blank misery, something of their despair. Oh, 
think of these needs! I say again, they are 
ocean-depths; and, beloved, in my Master’s 
name, I want you to look at them, until they 
appall you, until you cannot sleep, until you 
cannot criticise.” 


26 THE DIVINE URGE 


Secretary Lemuel Call Barnes of the Bap- 
tist Missionary Union writes as follows: “The 
present-day missionary motive is to establish 
the Kingdom of Heaven on earth in individual 
characters and in all the relationships of life.” 
This reply is fairly typical of the idea as it lies 
in the minds of a majority of Christian mis- 
sionaries, who cherish a conscious experience of 
the divine life, but who, unconsciously per- 
haps, are placing the emphasis on evolutionary 
and practical steps for the betterment of social 
conditions, rather than on a response to motives 
of pity for the lost condition of sinners, or on 
motives of simple faith in the reality of an 
independent spiritual life, and in obedience to 
God’s command, Go! Preach! whether it 
squares up with evolution and practical effi- 
ciency or not. This is, however, a good defi- 
nition of the missionary aim. It certainly is 
congenial to one’s Angl-Saxon temperament. 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 27 


Rev. H. W. Pope, superintendent of the 
Moody Bible Institute, writes: “I cannot 
think of any better description than what is 
contained in the Master’s own words, John 
17: 3, ‘And this is life eternal, that they might 
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom Thou hast sent.’ The missionary 
aim is to make known to them what eternal life 
is and how to obtain it, or, in other words, to 
show them how they may let Christ into their 
hearts to take possession of their life and to 
reproduce His character in them. Education, 
information and even inspiration may be im- 
parted to the heathen by many systems of 
thought, but transformation can only be 
wrought by the Holy Ghost in a twice born 
soul.” The interesting and valuable feature 
of this statement is the emphasis on the positive 
side of redemption, the new life, instead of 


28 THE DIVINE URGE 


the past emphasis on the awful loss of the 
impenitent. 

The China Inland Mission sends us an ex- 
cellent article by Henry W. Frost, its Director. 
He says: “The love of Christ—that is, 
Christ’s love for us—constraineth us. 

This motive really includes three motives. 
This then is the prime motive which 
God sets before Christians, individually and 
collectively, namely, that he who has a right to 
command has done so, and that the command, 
because of the Person, calls for unhesitating, 
uncompromising and continuous obedience, 
the second motive which God sets be- 
fore Christians, namely, to enter into Christ’s 
compassion for the lost souls and lives of men, 
and thus to be moved, as He was moved, and to 
be constrained as He was constrained. 
The final and consummating motive which 
God sets before Christians, namely, to go forth 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 29 


everywhere, preaching the good tidings to 
every creature, in order that the Church may 
be made complete and that the King and the 
Kingdom may come.” 

I re-read the Jubilee History of the China 
Inland Mission to see if I could find a quotable 
passage in the words of that greatest of mod- 
ern missionaries, J. Hudson Taylor. I did 
not find what I wanted, but I quote two pas- 
sages which indirectly show very clearly the 
motives that controlled his own missionary life. 
“Well do I remember,” he writes after many 
years, “how in the gladness of my heart I 
poured out my soul before God, and again 
and again confessed my grateful love to Him 
who had done everything for me—who had 
saved me when I had given up all hope and 
even desire for salvation. I besought Him to 
give me some work to do for Him, as an outlet 
for love and gratitude; some self denying serv- 


30 THE DIVINE URGE 


ice no matter what it might be, however trying 
and trivial; something with which He would 
be pleased and that I might do for Him who 
had done so much for me.” Quoting again 
from his memorable sermon before the Gen- 
eral Missionary Conference held in Shanghai, 
1890, that resulted in a united plea and prayer 
for 1,000 new missionaries for China, he said: 
“If as an organized conference we were to set 
ourselves to obey the command of our Lord 
to the full, we would have such an outpouring 
of the spirit, such a Pentecost as the world has 
not seen since the Spirit was poured out in 
Jerusalem. God gives His Spirit not to those 
who long for Him, nor to those who pray for 
Him, nor to those who desire to be filled al- 
ways, but He does give His Holy Spirit to 
them who obey Him. And if, as an act of 
obedience, we were to determine that every dis- 
trict, every town, every village, every hamlet 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 31 


in this land of China should hear the Gospel, 
and that speedily; and if we were to set about 
doing it, I believe that the Spirit would come 
down with such mighty power that we should 
find loaves and fishes multiplying on every 
_ hand—we do not know whence or how.” 

In these selections, as from all Hudson Tay- 
lor’s myriad appeals and activities, we feel 
radiating the three motives of grateful love, 
abounding faith, and humble obedience; and 
are not they after all the basal motives of all 
true missionary devotion and service? Grate- 
ful love to a Saviour, abounding faith in a 
Gospel, humble obedience to a divine Lord 
and Master. 

If one is moved by these motives, will he not 
most surely discern the Master’s commission ; 
will he not find himself best oriented to his 
task; will he not be most conscious of an ade- 
quate power for the work in hand? 


32 THE DIVINE URGE 


IDEALS VS. REALITY. 


The antithesis between the idealistic motives 
and the spiritual is not at first apparent. Both 
alike are facing the same great fact, the pitia- 
ble state of heathen nations, the superstitions, 
suffering and Godlessness of the non-Chris- 
tian peoples. Both are-moved to help, and at 
first both go about it in much the same way, by 
the spoken word, the distribution of literature, 
the conduct of schools, hospitals and institu- 
tions of various kinds. But gradually the 
methods diverge, the idealists press and mag- 
nify the instrumentality of the institutions and 
of methods that show efficiency and social re- 
sults, while the more spiritual exalt the preach- 
ing, making of converts, personal contact and 
loving help, and restrain the undue growth of 
the merely institutional. 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE — 33 


Unconsciously at first, but none the less 
surely, the idealist has branched off from the 
way and the method of the Master, and just 
as surely as he continues to move in that direc- 
tion he is moving away from the source of all 
missionary devotion and zeal and power, and 
is leaving behind all hope of spiritual results. 
He is working for civilization, and, while it is 
true that Christianity civilizes, civilization 
never christianizes. Sooner or later he loses 
the inspiration of the true missionary motive 
and relapses into mere Lae ae profes- 
sionalism. | 

Professor Peabody in his book, “Jesus 
Christ and the Social Order,” writes: “A 
Christian Mission in foreign parts lavishes its 
efforts in the attempt to bring heathen to 
Christ, and it counts, with great self-reproach, 
a few gains from all its devotion; but mean- 
while, while fulfilling all its technical obliga- 


34 THE DIVINE URGE 


tions, it comes to pass that the spiritual climate 
of the neighborhood of these devoted souls by 
degrees experiences a subtile change—cruelty 
disappears, domestic life grows purer, toler- 
ance and truthfulness begin to supplant the 
heathen traits of bigotry and deceit. What 
is this gentler air that is breathed wherever a 
wisely administered mission has done its pa- 
tient work? It is the proof that the Mission 
is accomplishing that which it was set to do. 
This, and not the number of converts it can 
count, is the test of its missionary fidelity, gen- 
- uineness and power. Many a man can teach 
Christian doctrine to heathen listeners, but 
only a life which has been hid with Christ in 
God can communicate to heathen lives the 
spiritual energy which proceeds through Christ _ 
from God. <A church for instance proceeds 
to enforce its forms and tests, its theology and 
philosophy, as its centra] duty, and as if inci- 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE = 35 


dentally and by the way leavens the commu- 
nity about it with the spirit of benevolence, 
sympathy, patience and hope. What a curious 
experience it might be for such a church some 
day to wake and discover that these incidental 
achievements were what most commended it to 
its Master!” 

This is a beautiful statement of the general 
effect of Christian missions. But is Professor 
Peabody right in his closing surmise? Is not 
the preliminary spiritual work, that makes for 
the redemption of character, the really essen- 
tial part and the social betterment, which Pro- 
fessor Peabody very evidently values the more 
highly, merely the natural accompaniment? 
Would he think that the spiritual part, the 
preaching and the conversion could be omitted 
and the full energy of the missionary be em- 
ployed in educational and humanitarian work 
to better advantage? Would the result be the 


36 THE DIVINE URGE 


same? Would the spiritual climate undergo 
the same beneficent change, or would we get 
civilization without religion, as in Japan and 
Prussian Germany? Is not then the preaching 
and the personal, distinctively spiritual work 
necessary, and should not they be the most 
valued and the most carefully conserved? The 
change in externals might wisely be looked 
upon as a by-product, as an almost automatic 
accompaniment of the true preaching of the 
Gospel. | 

Do not. misunderstand me. . I do not con- 
demn the humanitarian work of education, 
medical service, and social improvements in 
themselves, but I do deprecate making them 
the main aim of the missionary propaganda. 
They ought rather to be restricted, and only 
undertaken as the progress of the evangelistic 
work indicates the need. They ought to be 
undertaken with some reluctance as taking 


/ 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE = 37 


time and money from the more fundamental 
and valuable spiritual work, and carefully kept 
from assuming a place of exclusive importance, 
lest institutionalism supplant the individual 
voice and hand clasp of the evangelist. 

Let me illustrate this danger. Once there 
was a good missionary physician and his wife 
who labored patiently and successfully in a 
small and inconvenient hospital, but into whose 
every room and cranny they were able to radi- 
ate love and sympathy. Not a patient came 
but who went away influenced by the words 
and love of these truly Christian missionaries. 
But in the course of time, the physician and 
his energetic wife began to dream dreams of a 
larger and finer hospital. The dreams came 
true and they found themselves in possession 
of a big institution, wards, operating pavilion, 
kitchens, residences, and all that goes to make 
up a modern well equipped institution. 


38 THE DIVINE URGE 


Did the value of their Christian service in- 
crease in proportion? Not at all. With it 
came the necessity of employing one or two 
other doctors, nurses, and a corps of servants 
with all the accompanying worries of financial 
support, irritating questions of division of em- 
ployment, rank, and discipline; necessity for 
stricter rules, impossibility of coming into per- 
sonal contact with many of the patients, and a 
feeling through the neighborhood that it was 
an institution and not a person. ‘Then also it 
proved to be deterrent to any native medical 
work starting up owing to the impossibility of 
competing successfully. 

President Moore in his Wonderfully keen 
address before the Annual Meeting of the 
American Board a year ago threw the whole 
strength of his argument on this very point. 
He said: “The issues of human life, whether 
of men or nations, are not in their outward 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE = 39 


circumstances, their condition, their measures, 
their theories, but they are in the souls of men. 
The moral issues of life are the important 
thing. In reality there is no safety in outward 
conditions, but only in character. Men and 
nations need to be armed not with weapons in 
their hands, but with morality in. their hearts. 
There is no security for human happiness 
either in law or in lawlessness, but only in char- 
acter. Men cannot escape from God, and that 
is what men and nations are unconsciously try- 
ing to do, if they rest their reliance on mate- 
rial conditions.” 

If this be true, the main objective of all 
Christian Missions should be the redemption 
of human lives and character. All preaching, 
book selling, education, healing, industrial and 
humanitarian effort, should be looked upon as 
means to that end. All that is done should be 
done from the simple, sincere motive of intel- 


4.0 THE DIVINE URGE 


ligent, loving and trustful obedience to the 
Master who said: “I am the way, the truth, 
and the life; no man cometh unto the Father 
but by me.” The simple and obvious method 
of laboring in entire accord with this motive 
is by throwing the stress of our efforts on 
preaching, witnessing, and by personal contact. 


THE TEACHING OF JESUS. 


To establish this point, may I state as briefly 
as possible an outline of the teachings of Jesus 
as they appeal to me? 


First, Jesus was most concerned about what 
he called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom 
of Heaven. He seemed never to tire in his 
efforts to make his hearers understand what 
he meant by it; he began most of his parables 
by saying: “The Kingdom of Heaven is lik- 
ened unto’; he explained that “the Kingdom 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 41 


was not to come by observation,” that is, by 
sense perception, because it was “within you,” 
was to be sensed by one’s inner conscious- 
ness. “My Kingdom is not of this world,” He 
said. Putting all these teachings of Jesus to- 
gether we see plainly and clearly that Jesus 
meant by the Kingdom what we now know as 
the Spiritual Realm, or, if that suggests space 
and boundaries, it is what we might know as 
~ the Spiritual Life. He did not mean by it the 
church, or even an ideal state of society; he 
simply meant that there was another order of 
reality than the spatial, material, external 
world of nature, namely, the inner, immaterial, 
timeless—but universal—flow of Spiritual 
Vitality and Life. 

Jesus taught his disciples that this Kingdom 
of the Spirit had its basic laws; the laws of 
goodness, faith, hope, truth and life, and that 
these were all summed up in the all-inclusive 


42 THE DIVINE URGE 


spiritual law of love. He taught that this 
Kingdom of the Spirit was present here and 
now as a kind of over-world, or inner-world 
of Love; that it was not static or external, but 
vital and living, Perfect Life and Perfect 
Experience; and that its laws of love and faith 
and goodness when appealed to were also 
dominant in the natural realm here and now. 
Jesus taught that God was Sovereign of this 
all-enveloping and interpenetrating universe 
of love; that God by his very nature was Love, 
and that the essential elements of his love- 
nature were creativeness and a desire for a 
human response to his love. And so Jesus 
taught his disciples to think of God and to 
_ approach him in grateful love, as their Heav- 
enly Father. 

Jesus taught that human beings stood as it 
were beside the flow of this Kingdom of the 
Spirit. That, while they were born children of 


- TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 43 


the flesh, under certain conditions they could 
be reborn as children of the Spirit. This new 
spiritual correspondence was not to come as a 
continuation of the natural life after death, 
but was a present quickening and entrance into 
~ a higher life process, here and now. As Paul 
said: “But if the Spirit of Him who raised 
up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he 
that raised up Christ from the dead shall give 
life also to your mortal bodies through his 
Spirit which dwelleth in you.” 

Jesus taught that this new life of the Spirit 
could come only by the individual soul enter- 
ing into the most loving relations with the Di- 
vine. To be born again, and this time of the 
Spirit, the soul must make unselfish response 
to the urge of Redemptive Love; she must 
have faith and trust in her Lord; there must 
be such purifying of the depths of the subcon- 
scious nature, there must be such a reversal of 


44 THE DIVINE URGE 


the life currents from inward to outward, that 
the soul could react to the fecundating power 
of the Divine Love Vitality. “To as many as 
received Him, to them He gave power to be- 
come Sons of God, even to them that believed 
on His name; which are born not of the will of 
the flesh, nor of the will of men, but of God.” 

Secondly, Jesus considered himself to be in 
a special sense the incarnation of God’s loving 
thought toward the children of men, a Self-ex- 
pression of the Divine so vital and so unique 
that he could rightly claim to be the Son of 
God. He believed that his special mission was 
to reveal to all humanity this higher realm or 
Life of the Spirit and the way of entrance into 
it through love and faith in Himself. His mis- 
sion was not only to teach men about this realm 
of love, but how to live in the light and the 
power and the joy of it. He showed the power 
of it by the miracles he did. He carried his 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 485 


devotion to these spiritual principles even to 
his own death at the hands of his enemies, to 
show that there need be no limit to one’s faith 
in Love, and by his resurrection he proved that 
Love triumphs even over the death of the body. 
In the light and the power of this atoning 
Love Jesus became more than a teacher, more 
than an inspiring example. He became a point 
of contact with the infinite and eternal energy 
of the redemptive purpose of God, and it was 
in the consciousness that He was this point of 
contact between human faith and this divine 
energy of Redeeming Love, that Jesus said: 
“IT am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” 
that Jesus uttered the imperial command: “Go 
ye into all the world and make disciples of all 
nations.” 
~ Under this statement of the mission and the 
teachings of Jesus, the Christian life is seen to 
be: (1) an awakening to a consciousness of a 


46 THE DIVINE URGE 


transcendental world of the Spirit and of 
spiritual relationships that transcend the nor- 
mal world of sense. (2) It is an awareness 
of the possession of contacts with spiritual 
springs of energy welling up within the soul. 
(3) It is a spiritual life process, which is to 
lift the human soul into a higher realm of fel- 
lowship with God, where the human spirit can 
develop and unfold in a new realm of reality. 
(4) It has to do with phenomena in advanced 
biology. (5) Itis a responsive current of un- 
folding human love surging to meet the primal 
current of God’s cosmic and redemptive Love. 


A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 


The essential element of this summary of 
Jesus’ life and teachings is this: that God is 
Love, Love Absolute! Now the essential ele- 
ments of Love are its unifying, harmonizing, 


all-inclusiveness, its infinite desire and capacity 
Pal 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 47 


for self-expression and an equally strong de- 
sire for a response from its creation. This 
“forthgoing, pursuant Grace” operating in the 
boundless realm of the Spirit and in the limited 
area of time and space that we call Nature, is 
the profound cosmic law of the philosopher’s 
thought: it is the formative energy of crea- 
tion’s onward movement in an infinite process 
of becoming, by the inner urge of his Re- 
demptive Love; its goal is the complementary 
gathering together of the loving response of 
the infinitely many into the all-inclusive, har- 
monizing heart of the great One, into an in- 
creasing and mutual experience of Perfect 
Love. 


This vital urge of Love finds its highest ex- 
pression in a heightened sense of and capacity 
to respond to Divine Love. The law of Life 
has been urging the soul on to this experience 
from the beginning, in an aeon long history of 


48 THE DIVINE URGE 


evolution. “An experience,” says Dr. Tuck- 
well, “that is characterized by a great sense of 
illumination, a union of strands of thought and 
feeling into a higher synthesis of emotion in 
which consciousness attains its highest sense of 
unity and fellowship with the Infinite.” 

“This profound elan,” says Dr. Tuckwell, 
looking infinitely beyond the interests of tran- 
sient individuals and species, has been and still 
is, as M. Bergson says, moving to some far off 
results in man; . . .. and so it is in this 
profound, this mysterious elan that the real 
secret of life’s evolution lies.” 

This evolutionary progress has brought man 
to a point of mutation, where now, as an ani- 
mal, he comes under the influence of a new 
environment, the Spiritual Realm. Hitherto 
the natural laws of self-defense and self as- 
sertion, of desire to gratify the natural appe- 
tites and passions were exclusive almost in 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 49 


their action. Now he is conscious of a new 
orientation, a new apprizement of self and not 
self, a sensitiveness to a new set of influences, 
moral obligations, spiritual aspirations, a de- 
sire for the good, the true and the beautiful, in- 
fluences that now are seen to conflict with the 
old outward tugging of the senses. At this 
point of mutation, man finds himself where two 
courses lie open before him. Man can either 
continue to yield to the natural, physical urge, 
or he can respond to this new immaterial urge 
of the Spirit; he can not do both; one or the 
other must dominate. | 

If he yields to the desires of his physical 
nature he becomes over-developed—a biolog- 
ical freak. His desires for self assertion and 
indulgence will lead him into pride, arrogance 
and wickedness; he will become a Kaiser, a 
superman, and must in the end be sloughed off 
as an impediment to the onward unfolding of 


50 THE DIVINE URGE 


the redemptive process; his very points of 
physical and mental excellence and superiority 
proving to be inhibitions to continued growth 
and progress in the direction of the Perfect, 
which is spiritual. | 

On the other hand if man responds to the 
dawning urge of love and faith at this crucial © 
point of his unfolding development, he enters 
upon a new and seemingly endless avenue of 
approach to responding fellowship with the 
Divine Perfectness—‘“‘He is a new creature in 
Christ Jesus.” As though in a relay race of 
the ages, redeemed man has received the mes- 
sage from the past and in fresh, untested vigor 
essays the new untrodden path that leads him 
on toward God. “This one thing I do, for- 
getting the things which are behind, and 
stretching forward to the things which are be- 
fore, I press on toward the goal unto the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 51 


Under the constraint of this new sense of 
relationship to the whole, the redeemed soul 
finds herself unified with this Source of all 
Love, she too must yield to a desire to herself, 
give creative expression to the Divine Perfect- 
ness in a life of joy and loving service. This 
will not be a desire to help God make the world 
perfect, but it will be a desire to please God by 
being as nearly perfect oneself as one can be, 
and to give expression of this better life in 
loving service for others. And how can she 
better give expression to this outgoing desire 
than in telling others of this Redemptive Love 
of the Heavenly Father? | 


THE MISSIONARY AIM. 


The aim will be clearly toward a | spiritual 
goal. It would not be directly concerned with 
worldly, material success, or with politics or 
with economics, or with statistics s of tangible 


52 THE DIVINE URGE 


Serre Re ee my oo ne 


results. And most of all it could not be con- 
cerned with war—an appeal to force. ‘The 
missionary enterprise today is the one true ex- 
pression of the teachings of Jesus, the carrying 
to those at enmity, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, with God, the better way of love, the 
reconciliation of discord, not its increase. A 
glaring instance of this antithesis was seen in 
our Austrian Mission at the opening of the 
Great. War—when one of our Austrian mis- 
sionary: pastors over a Serbian church was re- 
called to his compulsory military service and 
sent to a war of extermination against the very 
people he had been trying as a missionary to 
win by love. No! the aim of Christianity can 
not be concerned with war in whatever disguise 
it may come, but it would be vitally concerned 
with one’s living a life of love, proclaiming to 
all people the Good News of a Spiritual 
Realm,. and a persuasion of all to a life of 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 53 


grateful love as the natural way of entrance 
into it. 

The aim would be to tell others of a 
Saviour’s redeeming Love, that they may 
thereby be brought into touch with this crea- 
tive urge of the Divine Love, and thereby be in 
line for the Divine grace to do its blessed crea- 
tive work in their lives, that will, as a matter 
of course, better their social environment and 
lead them into that inner harmony whose joy 
will be an increasing fellowship with Love. 
What is it then to be a Christian missionary ? 
Is it to go out to educate men? Is it to add 
spiritual culture to the furniture of their minds? 
Is it to show men and women hew to live more 
efficiently, more economically, or more com- 
fortably? Notatall! It is first of all to make 
Love the controlling motive of one’s life, to 
try hour by hour to unfold into the blossom- 
ing beauty of a child of God; to respond to 


54 THE DIVINE URGE > 


love’s urge to self-expression, to be all that 
Love expects of one; then it is to serve, not 
in a fussy plan of helping God to set things 
right in the world, but in a deep controlling 
purpose to be one with Him in carrying re- 
demptive Love wherever human hunger and 
need exist. 

_ It is to awaken interest in discouraged and 
ignorant hearts and minds to the riches of 
God’s love and forgiving grace; it is to tell 
them of a new type of life, with all its wonders 
of inner beauty, and loving fellowship, and 
illumination, and growth and heart’s ease. It 
is to give personal witness to its reality, its 
sufficiency, and its joy. It is to persuade men 
to make the quest for its perfect experience 
their great adventure in faith. First of all, 
each must ask of himself the question: Do I 
truly believe in such a distinctive life of the 
spirit? Have I myself entered into its life and 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 55 


experience? Can I honestly tell others that it 
is worth all it will cost to obtain it? 

And then secondly. Do we have clear ideas 
as to how to advise others so that they may 
guide their lives into its perfect experience? 
Do we feel sure of the way ourselves?) Do we 
know by experience that we cannot gain it by 
intellectual enlightenment alone, that it will 
mean a radical moral renewal, that as Jesus 
said, one must be born again, not of the flesh, 
or the mind, but of the spirit? 

Do we know by experience that to gain an 
effectual entrance there must needs be times 
of solitude and silent, prayerful desire; and 
other times of active energetic resistance to 
the habitual tug of worldly appetites and crav- 
ings; of humble, trustful, patient waiting for 
the fruits of the spirit? Can we tell others 
what they must expect of the fluctuation of 
mind as one tries to break away from the old 


56 THE DIVINE URGE 


and enter into the new, of the alternate waves 
of discouragement and faith, of weakness and 
strength? Have we ourselves learned by heart 
the stages of the mystic assent to God? De- — 
sire and awakening; discipline and illumina- 
tion; humility and the unitive life; PRHEUSE 
and fruitful service? 


MISSIONARY MOTIVES. 


The motives that will lead men to become | 
missionaries of this kind of a Christian faith 
will be first of all, a general response to the 
cosmic urge toward something better, an ad- 
venture in faith. ‘The same call came to 
Abram in far off Ur of the Chaldees, a desire 
to go, he knew not where, toward a promised 
land. It is the common love of adventure, the 
love of the heroic, and the romantic, inherent in 
the make up of every healthy youth and 
maiden, a response to the good, the true, and 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 57 


the beautiful, that urges one onward and out- 
ward and upward toward the ideal. This call 
of the ideal draws one from the common and 
the conventional to leave all, to venture all for 
Jesus’ dear sake, that in his service of love one 
might prove devotion and gratitude; to leave 
home and kindred, to follow Him ‘‘who for 
the joy that was set before Him endured the 
cross.” This call to adventure is no trivial, 
accidental impulse, it is the natural function- 
ing of the soul in conscious contact with this 
profound cosmic urge in which all creation 1s 
bathed; it is the to-be-expected reaction, the 
natural unfolding of the Perfection that is al- 
ready implicit within and of which this loving 
response is the next unfolding petal. 

Again there is the motive of responsive, 
grateful love, “T’o do what you want me to do, 
dear Lord. To be what you want me to be.” 
The soul has been benefited beyond measure 


58 THE DIVINE URGE 


by the unselfish life and death of her Re- 
deemer; she is conscious of the throbbing of a 
new spiritual life; she has participated in the 
_ dear fellowship with Him who was willing for 
her sake to lay down his life. She has entered 
into a new sense of relation to the Whole. Her 
chief interests are no longer with self but with 
all. Such grateful responsive love always 
thrills with a compelling desire to share with 
the Beloved in the labor and the purposes for 
which He gave the full measure of His own 
undying love; and in the strength of this 
motive the soul can travel through the wilder- 
ness for many, many days. 

There is the motive of humble obedience. 
Gratitude for all that has been done for one’s 
eternal welfare prompts one to obey. If the 
redeemed soul hears the explicit command, Go! 
then her impulse is to obey, and to obey simply 
and without question. So long as this motive 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 59 


is operative there is little temptation to turn 
aside at the alluring call of man-made plans 
for war and substitutes for social betterment. 

There is the motive of faith: of faith in 
Jesus, of faith in Jesus’ way. Having herself 
had experience of the joy of divine forgive- 
ness, of new life and increase of strength, of 
visions of hope and promise, of sweet fellow- 
ship with the Saviour, and happy zest for serv- 
ice, knowing this from personal experience, 
there is place only for high hearted courage. 
The world has not yet begun to realize the 
creative power of human faith. The New 
Thought cult has brought shame on the Chris- 
tian Church for lack of practical faith. Jesus 
said, “If ye had faith even as a grain of mus- 
tard seed you could move mountains,” and 
Paul said, “I can do all things through Christ.” 
Faith is not merely mental belief that a thing 
is possible, or credible; faith is an actual crea- 


60 THE DIVINE URGE 


tive power that brings to objective reality the 
visions that are born of love. When human 
need is seen, the true Christian knows that it 
can be transmuted into “the peace that passes 
all understanding.” This abounding faith of 
the Christian is a motive that shall yet over- 
come the world. 

Then there is the motive of pity, to which 
one who has known the poverty of this world 
and the abounding riches of the higher life is 
peculiarly sensitive. Love is always kind, and 
is full of sympathy. One recognizes that most 
of the pain and sorrow of life is caused by the 
loneliness of people and could be removed or 
avoided if they could be brought into touch 
with Jesus. The true missionary sees as did 
Jesus on the barren hills of Galilee, a people 
hungry, homeless and scattered, and his heart 
yearns to tell them of a Shepherd’s love, that 
can lead them to pastures green with eternal 


TO MISSIONARY SERVICE 61 


verdure, and refreshed with the abundance of 
the water of life. 

Whenever these missionary motives shall 
appeal to souls made sensitive by the divine 
impulse of redemptive love and who are cher- 
ishing in the deep levels of the sub-conscious 
nature a love for the great Whole, they shall 
hear angelic voices saying: “Thou hast found 
favor of the most High; thou shalt go before 
the face of the Lord to make ready his way; 
to give knowledge of salvation into his people 
in the remission of their sins, because of the 
tender mercy of our God.” 

To such a soul yielding herself in spiritual 
devotion to the reaction of these missionary 
motives of grateful love, abounding faith, 
humble obedience there comes a reassuring and 
ennobling recognition of the soul’s essential 
oneness with the Universal, the Infinite, the 
Perfect, with God himself. Whether they 


62  ##THE DIVINE URGE 


recognize it or not the devout missionary is of 
the chosen ones, the elect from among the na- 
tions. For it is only as the human soul re- 
sponds to this cosmic urge of Redemptive Love 
that the individual soul and the race partici- 
pate in the sublime and deepening harmony of 
creation’s increasing response to the cosmic 
and eternally redemptive purpose of our God. 
“For God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
Him should not perish, but should have ever- 
lasting life.” “Go, ye, therefore, into all the 
world and make disciples of all nations; and 
lo! I am with you alway.” 


